Friday, August 9, 2013

My two cents on the compulsory rural service for doctors debate

This is a response to one and many such articles, DownToEarth shared this on FB and invited comments :

"Are junior doctors justified in protesting against rural posting which has been made a condition for admission to post-graduate medicine courses?" http://ow.ly/nLNAO

My response:
There are completely other reasons why this compulsion is a wrong thing. Modern medicine is a failed institution and a money-spinning industry. Rural areas need to preserve/ revive their traditional knowledge of medicine. Sending city-bred doctors to these areas will kill the traditional knowledge, and make rural folk unnecessarily dependent on unsustainable infrastructure for their health.

On the argument of rural health, it's quite obvious that poor health in rural areas is arising due to the influence of chemicals-based agriculture-on-steroids, reckless mining and processing industries dumping their pollutant waste in their ecosystems. If we really want to address these issues, shutting down all polluting factories and stopping the subsidies for and discouraging use of unsafe chemicals in farming, would be good places to start. Sending in more doctors will do nothing towards solving the problems - it'll only serve as a distraction and be yet another way to waste public money. Prevention is better than cure.

This push is less out of genuine concern for rural areas and more a ploy to expand the business of Big Pharma into unexploited sectors. In this battle of occupation, the doctors are being made unwilling, conscripted soldiers sent in to waste important years of their lives for some rich people's profits.

Taking this to the maco level, EVERY human being on this planet is justified in refusing to do something out of compulsion as long as he/she is not directly harming another human being by this refusal. There is no clear evidence that not doing the compulsory rural posting will harm anybody... Anyways the whole rationale of forcing people to do things for "the common good" has historically created only more problems, be it any sector.

But taking this further, if Big Pharma has really hijacked the certified medical profession, then the best thing that can come out of this is a movement of doctors to break free of the top-down institutions, unite and create independent bodies and start practicing REAL healing, OUTSIDE of the official/certified medical establishment. That will only help the people get better choices at hand for their health woes. Already the ayurved / homeopathy / naturopathy / nutrition / energy-healing movement has earned considerable credibility out of sheer results. Instead of dismissing these, an alternative medical union free of Pharma and dogma may start taking them seriously and add some solid research into them.

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Inviting your thoughts..? (I'd love to hear what some doctors / people with loved ones in medical profession/education have to say about this)